Category Archives: Creative Writings

I admire you folks with the focus to write consistently. Some of you write daily, others weekly, but the point is: you stick with it. I looked back at my last entry. It’s been nine months.

I’m back and trying to rally with a commitment to write every two weeks. Twice a month is a realistic goal for me, I think. I just need to cut way back on the Netflix. It also doesn’t help that I’m as focused as a crow…instantly abandoning whatever I’m doing to run off and investigate the next shiny object.

But what might help is the onset of winter. The decision to stay home is much easier for me when it’s cold outside. I don’t much care for winter. Here in Vegas, where we measure the temperature in Fahrenheit, the summer can hover around 110 degrees for weeks on end. Conversely, our winters are very mild compared to many other parts of our nation. We might get below freezing a few times in a whole season. For someone who’s used to the summer heat, our winters are as cold as I care to experience them.

With the holidays approaching quickly and New Year’s Eve right behind, I think it’s safe to assume that many hundreds of blog posts will be themed around 2015 resolutions. I’ve already promised myself that I won’t take up that as subject matter this year. I recently revisited my 2014 goals, ya know, to feel bad about myself. I had listed five goals. All were very reasonable goals. I checked off two, with a third that was 90% complete but then scuttled because of unforeseen circumstances. I feel I did all that I could to salvage goal #3 so I’m choosing not to beat myself up over that one. I will, as I do every year, refer to my resolutions as goals, so I don’t have to admit making New Year’s Resolutions if I happen to be in a conversation where the cool kids scoff at resolution makers. It’s a defense mechanism.

I do, however, look forward to reading many of your 2015 resolution posts, should any of you decide to share them.

Occasionally when I’m driving at night, I’ll turn my attention away from my immediate surroundings and look toward the city’s edge. Las Vegas has so many lights when you focus on its heart. The Strip is a bonfire in the Nevada desert. But you can trace the edge of the city with your eyes. If you turn your back toward the Strip, the myriad points of light form a horizon. There are always strays; dots of light that stand outside the cluster. And for some reason, those lights interest me. I wonder in my mind: from what source is this tiny light? Yes, a bulb of some sort, of course, but what is its purpose? I always want to believe it’s a porch light. It’s a place someone calls home. It’s a place where the light is on because someone that is home is waiting for someone else to come home. And that scenario creates so many stories.

I’ve imagined myself choosing a light and driving to it, continually focused on it so as not to lose it amongst the others, and eventually finding out its purpose.

A friend emailed the following list to me earlier this week. Some of these are damn funny! Had to share. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

English teachers across the country submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published annually, to the amusement of our teachers. Here are last year’s winners:

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 PM instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 PM traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 PM at a speed of 35 mph.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

I’ve been on an Edgar Allan Poe kick this past week. It was my love for The Raven that spurred me into wanting to read some of his other work. I know the names of some of his most famous writings: The Pit And The Pendulum, The Mask Of The Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart for example, but I’ve never read them. The Tell-Tale Heart seems so ubiquitous and well-known that sometimes I feel as though I’ve read it already. It’s reached such a level as to be “general knowledge.” And when something has been parodied by The Simpsons, one knows it’s reached mainstream popular culture. Another example: I’ve never seen The Godfather (I know, I know), but it’s been referenced through the media and my own friends so many times that I feel as though I could retell the story unerringly.

One of the great things about reading Poe is that most of his stories are quite short–perfect for someone with a brief attention span like myself. Full disclosure: I’m not actually reading the Poe stories–they’re audio books I’m listening to on the iPod.

I’m enjoying the stories very much, which caused me to do some research on the man behind the words. Rather than lengthening this post too much, I’m just going to bullet point some interesting facts of Edgar Allan Poe’s life:

Born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, MA

Father had abandoned the family early on, and at the age of three, Poe’s mother dies

Poe becomes the foster child of John and Frances Allan, a successful tobacco merchant

He is accepted into West Point and excels at his studies but is discharged due to his poor handling of his duties. It is during his time at West Point when he fought with his foster father and John Allan decided to sever all ties to Poe

While staying with his aunt in Baltimore, Virginia Clemm, his young cousin became his literary muse and love interest, eventually secretly marrying her when she was only 13 years old. She died 11 years later of tuberculosis

Poe was primarily a literary critic for which he earned a reputation for being vicious. This reputation–and by some reports, his alcoholism–caused his dismissal by various employers

The publication and success of The Murders in the Rue Morgue gave rise to Poe being considered the father of detective fiction

The Raven, published in 1845, was an enormous success and, to this day, is considered a masterpiece of literature

Many of his macabre tales were written in first person, leading many readers to believe that Poe was himself a strange fellow

Bizarre Death: While traveling to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared. He was found five days later, incoherent in a bar. The clothes he was wearing were not his own. He died on October 7, 1849 at the age of 40. His last words were “Lord, help my poor soul.” The actual cause of Poe’s death still remains a mystery.

I’ve spent this Friday evening catching up on all the posts from the blogs I follow, reading Freshly Pressed, and just generally hopping from link to link, becoming fully absorbed in all the amazing pieces from the writers on WordPress.

I saw a bird fly above me. I paused to watch it as I wondered where it might be going. It was one of those crisp winter days when everything had a gray cast to it. The air was still and sharply cold. I had paused on the sidewalk in a familiar neighborhood, just before the walk up the drive. The street was clear of others. It was just me. School children and their parents were already inside their homes, warming up, hugging one another, preparing the evening meal and discussing the events of the day. I was on the sidewalk, standing still, allowing the solitude of that moment to envelope me … and gazing.

I was still looking into the grayish, late afternoon sky at the spot where the bird had flown. My eyes lingered there, viewing the miles of empty space that finally ended at a jagged horizon. The mountains were just beginning their lavender turn. My brain felt blank but was swirling with thoughts in that numb sort of way when you’ve got so much on your mind that you can’t organize it. The thoughts are bullets through my head, so fast that to catch them is impossible. While others meander like ghosts, nebulous, unclear and, at my mind’s grasp, wisp away like smoke, hopeless to reform.

It felt as though much time had passed when I suddenly became aware that I was still standing on the curb. The evening winter air stung my ears and cheeks as the tired gray gracefully gave way to a brilliant yellowish orange sky, its modesty put aside. I closed my eyes and poked my chin forward, hoping to feel that warm light on my face, even in the faintest, for one last moment and lock it away in my memory. I opened my eyes and the sunset sky had bowed to time, and began it’s decline into purple and the blues of the night. A biting breeze began swirling and scraping around me and my eyes began to well up in response. A shiver gripped me once and again as the low moon ushered in an aggressive chill.

My hands were stuffed deep in my trouser pockets, elbows locked. They were cold and sweaty, clasped around miscellaneous pocket items: keys, a few bills and coins, Chapstick … and a loose key, by itself at the bottom of my right pocket. My mother’s house key. And then my mind began to clear. The thought of the key brought with it clarity. It’s why I am here in this familiar neighborhood. It’s why I’m on the curb reluctant to walk up the drive. I will use this key one last time to collect the objects of her life. And move on into the winter of my own.